Anti-racist pedagogies and a critical perspective on issues of racism in foreign language education have played a role in Anglophone research and teaching contexts for some time (Kubota & Lin, 2006; Pennycook, 1999). This paper will now outline a concept of race-sensitive and anti-racist foreign language education in the German context. Under the umbrella of Critical Race Literacy, it combines Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness and Critical Pedagogy with migration pedagogy and cultural studies-informed foreign language education. In a second step, the impact of Critical Race Literacy as a pedagogical concept and competence will be examined in four areas of foreign language teaching and learning: 1) in terms of knowledge; 2) in terms of values, beliefs, and attitudes; 3) in the selection of learning objects; and 4) in teacher-student and student-student interactions. In doing so, we aim to conceptualize anti-racist foreign language education in its complexity and provide a basis for classroom ideas and necessary classroom research.
Aufsätze
The article argues for the necessity of a decolonial and race critical approach to the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language in German-speaking countries. By combining these approaches as interlocking perspectives, the article proposes the unlearning of internalized (colonial) racist assumptions and knowledges within the context of teaching Spanish as a colonial language and the coloniality of education. Analyses of two key incidents in the learning biographies of learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language will be employed to illustrate areas of coloniality, linguicism and racism in Foreign Language Education. This unlearning aims to mitigate cognitive and social injustices and to acknowledge the important place of epistemologies of the Global South within canons of knowledge. Through interpretive vigilance in the selection of academic subjects and the general empowerment to recognize the relevance of decolonial and race critical analyses, significant steps can be taken towards a more power-critical and just Spanish Language Education. The article concludes with a critical self-reflection and provides an outlook on decolonial and race critical potentialities in research and teaching.
This contribution critically investigates how selected textbooks and teaching materials for teaching English as a foreign language in German and Austrian primary and secondary schools perpetuate the construction of racism. The results of a critical discourse analysis exemplify how racist tendencies in educational media are not only subtly present, indicating a lack of sensitivity to the issue of racism in the respective publishing houses, but that this is also partly regarded as unproblematic in the reflection by teachers. This article addresses the following questions: How is race represented in English textbooks? What implications can be inferred from this representation? What actions need to be taken based on these implications?
Im Beitrag werden erste Ergebnisse eines Lehrforschungsprojekts vorgestellt, das darauf zielt, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer (rassismus-)kritischen Englischlehrer:innenbildung auszuloten. Lehramtsstudierende konzipierten im Rahmen eines Seminars der Englischdidaktik ein Schulprojekt zum Thema race und Rassismus und führten dieses mit einer Schulklasse im 10. Jahrgang durch. Dieser Prozess wurde qualitativ empirisch begleitet: Der von den Studierenden durchgeführte Unterricht wurde ethnographisch beobachtet, es wurden semistrukturierte Interviews mit den Studierenden durchgeführt und schriftliche Autoethnographien erhoben. Der Beitrag geht insbesondere auf die Unterrichtserfahrungen der Lehramtsstudentin Frieda ein, die im Rahmen des Schulprojekts das Ziel verfolgte, die Ko-Naturalisierung von Sprache und Rassismus zu hinterfragen. Während sie die Englischlernenden zur kritischen
Diskurspartizipation ermutigte, stieß sie auf Grenzen rassismuskritischen Sprechens im schulischen Kontext. In der kritischen Diskursanalyse ihrer Autoethnographien wird herausgearbeitet, wie sie mit Momenten der Ungewissheit umging. Ausgehend von diesen ersten empirischen Einsichten sollen dekoloniale Potenziale von Englisch unterricht diskutiert und Implikationen für eine kritische Fremdsprachenlehrer:innenbildung abgeleitet werden.
In recent years, there has been a growing call for critical anti-racist professional competences for teachers, as racism structures all social interactions – including language education. It could be argued that English teachers are more familiar with racism than most of their colleagues, as racism-related issues are frequently addressed in English language textbooks. However, these might also reproduce racism and cannot guarantee a critical anti-racist engagement. By focusing only on English-speaking countries, the English language classroom runs the risk of localising racism overseas if it does not refer back to Germany as a post-colonial and post-national socialist society, where racism is widely considered to have been overcome. This paper proposes glocality as a potentially fruitful concept for promoting critical anti-racist professionalisation. Originating in environmental research, glocality integrates local and global spheres while revealing a simultaneity of universalising and particularising tendencies of different phenomena. In education, it helps to identify intersections of the global and the local of racism and can be used in reflection processes. To illustrate its benefits for English
language teacher education, two racism-relevant examples at the societal and individual level are outlined. These show how racism in English-speaking target cultures can be interconnected with the local context (e. g., Germany) or individual positionality (e. g., of the author). Then, potential moments for glocal self-reflexivity in university English teacher education are suggested in order to initiate a critical anti-racist professionalisation within existing structures.
https://www.wbv.de/shop/Wer-ueber-George-Floyd-spricht-sollte-auch-Mouhamed-Drame-kennen-ZFF2501W007
Alongside the integration of domain-specific knowledge and the establishment of connections between oneself, other people involved and the reflected object, reflective depth in the sense of a mental examination of the reflected object is one of the central indicators of reflective competence. For this reason, concepts that attempt to operationalize and empirically measure reflective depth through different levels are part of numerous research studies. Lately, these have been increasingly incorporated into teacher education formats that aim to achieve reflective teacher development. In this article, various concepts are examined for common features and merged into a context-independent model of reflective depth.
This empirical study investigates AI knowledge, beliefs, and reported practices among secondary school learners of English, French, and Spanish in Germany (N = 226). A survey revealed significant gaps between students’ self-perceived and actual understanding of AI as well as their use of and critical reflection on it. The findings suggest that integrating AI into foreign language learning, initially through targeted teacher training, is instrumental to develop both functional and evaluative skills among students, thereby sustainably fostering critical digital literacy.
https://www.wbv.de/shop/Fremdsprachenlernende-und-Kuenstliche-Intelligenz-ZFF2501W009